très.b is a “a très cool” international band based in Maastricht. A profile by Crossroads writer Hania Piotrowska. [continued…]

Oud-Rekem has been chosen ‘Most beautiful village in Flanders’. The Limburg village won a competition that aims to promote ‘the hidden secrets of the Flemish countryside’.
Watch video:

Source: Redactie.be, 29 May 2008
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Youth and Family Minister André Rouvoet wants to put an end to the advertising of sweets aimed at children under the age of 12.
He has called on businesses not to produce advertisements for sweets, cola, ice-cream and fast-food specifically aimed at this group. The food trade no longer produces advertisements for these products for children […]

In a report broadcast on Tuesday evening on the TV current affairs programme NOVA, a Dutch prison warden revealed that illegal aliens are often abused and tormented by guards. She says illegal aliens are sometimes put in isolation cells for no reason at all and they are often the victims of excessive violence.
The whistleblower works […]

Flemish Ministers of Mobility Kathleen Van Brempt and Public Works Hilde Crevits announced Tuesday the 162 spots where flash poles with digital cameras will be erected during 2008 and 2009.
Forty digital flash cameras will be placed along motorways. The flash limit will be 129 km/h, with a technical fault margin of 6 percent above the […]

All trains owned by the Dutch Rail (NS) group are to be fitted with surveillance cameras in an effort to cut railway-connected crime, the NS confirmed on Wednesday.
New trains will automatically be given cameras and older stock will have cameras fitted when being renovated.
A spokesman for the company told news agency ANP that buses, trams […]

The number of cannabis addicts in the Netherlands seeking help at official bodies has risen explosively since 1994. Cocaine and amphetamine users are also on the rise. Conversely, demand for aid among users of heroine and methadone declined, according to the National Drug Monitor.
The number of people seeking help at addiction aid organisations for a […]

The drowning rate is higher among children from non-western countries who recently immigrated to the Netherlands than among native Dutch children. Children in the age group 6–10 are relatively often drowned.
Reduced risk of drowning
Since the mid-1990s, the risk of drowning for children has been reduced. Only for children with a non-western background who recently immigrated […]

In 2007, an average day out cost 14 euro per person. Adjusted for price changes, this is nearly 11 percent more than in 2002. Altogether, the Dutch spent nearly 13 billion euro on recreational trips, over one billion more than in 2002. The inflation-adjusted increase is only 2 percent. This is due to a decline […]

Maastricht University is hosting the world’s first conference devoted to the personal relationships that will develop between humans and robots in the coming decades. The conference will take place on June 12th and 13th 2008.
The conference was inspired by the worldwide publicity that surrounded a PhD awarded by the university last October, for a thesis […]

The Maastricht University Medical Centre (UMC+), University Medical Center Aachen (UKA) and Royal Philips Electronics N.V. announced that they are to set up a strategic partnership, the aim of which is to pool their knowledge, expertise and experience in the field of healthcare.
The planned cooperation will make it possible for new scientific findings to […]

The Dutch Upper House has agreed to introduce free schoolbooks in secondary schools. Currently parents have to buy or rent schoolbooks for secondary school children paying anything up to 400 euros.
However, a majority of the house wants Deputy Minister of Education Marja van Bijsterveldt to investigate whether parents of children in MBO or secondary […]

In many Dutch cities and neighbourhoods, residents are complaining about absentee landlords who purchase homes and split them into units, renting small apartments and rooms to students and foreign workers. In some cities entire neighbourhoods have been affected by a room-rental scourge. Problems of noise pollution, littering and poor upkeep are forcing many residents to […]

The Dutch are paying less and less for Internet and telephone services. In its annual report, telecom watchdog Opta says this is because of the increasing competition, in particular between cable companies. In comparison with five years ago, mobile phone calls are cheaper. The Netherlands is one of the world’s top countries with regard to […]

Young unaccompanied asylum seekers who do not receive a residence permit in the Netherlands have to leave the country by their eighteenth birthday, says Justice Minister Nebahat Albayak. If necessary, she says force should be used. This way the minister wants to prevent young unaccompanied asylum seekers from disappearing into the illegal circuit.
The previous government […]

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux) will sign a new reciprocal treaty in The Hague next month, the Benelux Treaty.
“The old treaty has yielded much for our countries, the new one modernises and strengthens the partnership,” Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen announced yesterday in Brussels after a meeting with his Belgian and Luxembourg counterparts. “The cooperation […]

Education Minister Ronald Plasterk is allocating specific subsidies to improve the school performance of non-western immigrants.
“In the past 10 years, the number of non-western immigrant students has risen strongly. Substantial growth is particularly evident in HBO (colleges). Despite this positive development, the course success of immigrant students still appears to be lower than that of […]

The European Championship will generate more than 100 million euros in turnover in Dutch shops this summer, according to the Council of Dutch Retail Trade. Supermarkets were already expecting to make an extra 45 million euros. Non-food products such as televisions and orange knickknacks are expected to be good for 70 to 80 million euros […]

Dutch households are receiving ever-larger quantities of door-to-door flyers in their mailboxes. Last year, a total of 12.5 billion flyers were distributed, a 20 percent increase over 2006. Environmental organisations are worried about the continuous growth of junk mail.
Recycling Network, a network of several environmental organisations argues that the government should introduce an environmental tax […]

More and more Dutch people are going across the border for medical treatment, report figures released by The Netherlands’ two largest insurers.
Trouw reported Monday that there were 1,000 claims for treatment in Belgium in 2006, but that number shot up to 8,000 in 2007.
AD also reported Monday that there were no waiting lists across […]

“Why is Europe boring? Why doesn’t it sell?” asked professor Ulrich Beck and the audience gathered in the lecture hall of the Maastricht Faculty of Economics went quiet. “The history of Europe is a story of ‘NO’,” answered Beck to his own question, “Europe is a lady in her 50’s, without a name. It’s a reality without theory.”

Is “cosmopolitanism” the missing narrative for Europe, as suggested by Beck?

A review of the annual Schuman lecture that took place earlier this month at Maastricht University, by Misia Furtak. [continued…]

It could take a week to clear the wreckage of the US cargo plane, a Boeing 747 that crashed at Brussels Zaventem Airport on Sunday. The US carrier Kalitta Air broke apart close to a row of houses while trying to abort a takeoff Sunday. The plane snapped into three pieces. Air traffic, but also […]

An interesting post with some facts and figures about the Netherlands in today’s Guardian:
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, although they also recognise several minority regional languages, including West Frisian, Low Saxon, Twentse and Limburgish.
Roughly 70% of the Dutch population speaks English.
If you’re ever stuck for an example of a “synecdoche”, ie […]

As of Friday, the Netherlands has a website listing all local plants and animals that aims to track the country’s biodiversity.
Each animal or plant is listed by its scientific name and is followed by an indication whether it is a protected species or not.
The Dutch registry www.nederlandsesoorten.nl will in future be connected to a worldwide […]

The biggest Bronze Age settlement ever found in the Netherlands has been uncovered during road works at the A50/A58 junction north of Eindhoven, news agency ANP reports on Friday.
Almost four hectares have already been excavated, revealing the remains of 19 farms and over 50 ancillary buildings, ANP reports.
Archaeologists say the regulated distances between the farms […]

Some 70,000 German students study abroad each year, but most of them don’t go far. Last year, 14,000 went just next door, to the Netherlands, with Maastricht the destination of choice.
Read the article: Deutsche Welle, 25 May 2008
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Memorial Day has been held at the military graveyard Margraten in Limburg. The event commemorates US soldiers who died in the Second World War.
Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen gave a speech on behalf of the Dutch government. Defence Minister Eimert van Middlekoop, Education Minister Ronald Plasterk and Deputy Minister for European Affairs Frans Timmermans also attended […]

Rent-an-Ambassador’. That’s the title of Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen’s new project aimed at explaining the Netherlands’ foreign policy to the Dutch. At the launch Mr Verhagen criticised populist political leaders Geert Wilders and Rita Verdonk on the right and the Socialist Party on the left, claiming they are closing themselves off from the rest of […]

A Dutch-led team of scientists has announced the discovery of the first dinosaur tracks to be found on the Arabian Peninsula.
Led by Anne Schulp of the Maastricht Museum of Natural History in the Netherlands, the researchers found evidence of a large ornithopod dinosaur, as well as a herd of 11 sauropods that apparently had been […]

The practice of being naked in nature, or naturism, is not foreign to Dutchmen, discovers American expat Kathlyn Clore in Maastricht. [continued…]